“The piper cam to our toun, To our toun, to our toun; The piper cam to our toun, And he play’d bonnilie; He play’d a spring the laird to please, A spring brent new frae yont the seas, And then he ga’e his bags a squeeze, And play’d anither key. And wasna he a roguey, a roguey, a roguey; And wasna he a roguey, the piper o’ Dundee.” —_Old Scots Song._ Royal pipers—In France—At the English court—The Edinburgh Piper— Dumbarton—Biggar—Wigtown—Glenluce—Dumfries—Linlithgow—Aberdeen— Perth—Keith—Dalkeith—Dundee—Peebles—A weird story—Falkirk— “Gallowshiels” pipers’ combat—The Hasties of Jedburgh—Habbie Simson of Kilbarchan—Bridgeton—Neil Blane of Lanark—The Piper of Northumberland. Although as a clan musician the piper was to a large extent a public character, he was quite as public in one or two other capacities. There were semi-royal pipers, and there were burgh pipers. We have not much record of the former, that is, until our own day, when the piper is one of the principal personages in the Royal retinue—but we have plenty of the latter. In 1505, we read, “pipers on drones” shared of the royal bounty of James IV.; and we have various references to pipers in connection with Court ceremonials. In France the piper was an appendage of the royal household in the seventeenth century, and in Ben Jonson’s _Irish Masque_, performed at the Court of England in 1613, six men and six boys danced to the bagpipe. But there is nothing to show that the piper in olden days formed part of the regular following of Scottish sovereigns. Pipers were kept by English noblemen, but their instrument was not the Highland. It was as burgh pipers that they were best known in a public capacity, in the Lowlands of Scotland at any rate. Each burgh had one or two, and the office, like that of clan piper, was in many cases hereditary. The pipers were supported out of the public funds along with other minstrels. Here is Rev. James Mac Kenzie’s description of the relation of the piper to a burgh, given in his _History of Scotland_:— [Illustration: (_From Drawings by J. Sands. By permission of Messrs. J. & R. Glen, Edinburgh._) ]